MERGECHANGES(1)

💖 MERGECHANGES 💖

okay bestie, listen up — this is mergechanges, a lil Debian utility that does exactly what it says on the tin ✨

🌸 NAME 🌸

mergechanges — merge multiple changes files 🫶

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

mergechanges [-d] [-f] [-S] [-i] file1 file2 [file...]

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

so mergechanges takes two or more .changes files and smushes them together, merging the Architecture, Description and Files fields (plus Checksums-* if they're in there 👀).

and before you ask — yes, it does a vibe check first. there are checks to make sure the changes files are all from the same source package and version and that they use the same changes file Format. no frankenstein merges here, periodt 💅

the first changes file is the main character 👑 — it's used as the basis, and all the info from the later ones gets merged into it.

📝 where does the output go tho

normally the output is written to stdout, like a normal well-behaved tool. ✨

but if you pass the -f option, the output goes to package_version_multi.changes instead — in the same directory as the first changes file listed. iykyk. 🦋

🗑️ the options, one by one

• -d — if the output is generated successfully, the input files get deleted 😭 so like… be sure bestie, fr fr.
• -f — write the output to package_version_multi.changes instead of stdout, in the same directory as the first changes file listed. 📁
• -S, --source — only source packages get included in the output. that's it, that's the whole vibe. 🧚
• -i, --indep — source packages and architecture-independent (Architecture: all) packages get included in the output, but architecture-dependent packages do not. lowkey selective, highkey iconic. ✨

💜 AUTHOR 💜

Gergely Nagy <algernon@debian.org>, with modifications by Julian Gilbey <jdg@debian.org>, Mark Hymers <mhy@debian.org>, Adam D. Barratt <adam@adam-barratt.org.uk>, and Simon McVittie <smcv@debian.org>. legends, all of them 🌈👑

okay that's the whole page bestie, no cap 🫶 this one lives in the Debian Utilities collection under the name MERGECHANGES(1) — go forth and merge those changes files, you absolute icon 💖🌸✨